


I Can See Her Turning Off the Sun

by apatternedfever



Category: Firefly
Genre: Academy, Drabble Collection, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-25
Updated: 2010-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:16:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apatternedfever/pseuds/apatternedfever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three moments from River's time at the Academy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can See Her Turning Off the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the writing_game community at livejournal, for the prompts: Zealous; Fall; Villain. Title from the song _Universe_ by Sarah Slean.

She paces in her room, restless but quiet and calm, so they leave her alone. She isn't like the others, the ones that yell and scream and shake and pound the walls until their fists are raw; not yet. She'll hold out as long as she can. The others are drugged, sedated if they seem dangerous, or if they're too loud, too disruptive.

So River just paces, her feet bare. The floor is cold enough to make her shiver, but she barely notices.

"I don't want --" and she's using negatives again, making demands again, she stops pacing to think, to rephrase-- "I would like to go home," she whispers to herself.

She continues pacing. The doctors keep telling her she's doing so well, that her progress is wonderful. It makes her want to scream. She's not progressing, she's _regressing_, moving backwards into herself, moving backwards into something unhuman, something that won't be this hurt by them--

"We're doing such good work," she mutters to herself.

She falls to her knees and vomits the words out of her mouth.

\---

Dr. Matthias watches her progression--

No, _watches_ is too passive a verb to describe it.

Dr. Matthias tracks her progression--

And though he might (although technically it's his aides who study the data and make the charts), that doesn't sound quite right either, too impersonal and detached for his enthusiasm.

Dr. Matthias follows her progression, pouring over charts and videos and transcripts, watching her training sessions, quietly pleased with her. He studies her like a religious scholar studies his Bible, because this work is Dr. Matthias' religion, and her case the most successful and therefore the Bible of How To Do This Right, how to break a girl into pieces and put the pieces together into the perfect robot.

\---

**Session 312 (Excerpt)**

"...locked up in a tower, gold dungeon, the princesses cry and cry and they _can't be heard_. Let down her hair and there's no one there to climb up it and the dragon cackles like a witch and stabs her with another thorn, too many thorns and they're all inside me, tried to climb through the bush to escape and the thorns just stuck deeper in and they won't come out, they never come _out_, get them out! Get them out...."

"...I have a mission. I have a reason, I have a purpose, I have a mission, no one will give me a mission, I need a mission...."


End file.
